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This paper aims to look at the nature of the relationship between the marketing of the contemporary visual arts, cultural tourism and city and urban regeneration. This exploratory study of the marketing of the contemporary visual arts in Leeds has, as its background narrative, the emergence of BritArt.

The growth of contemporary visual arts provides the context for a case study of the Northern Art Prize, which was first awarded in 2007.

The study found a number of factors for success that can aid urban renewal and city regeneration. Private sector marketing expertise levered into the management of the project was one critical success factor. Another was that private sector funding freed up marketers and artists and allowed risk-taking. Participants highlighted a lack of vision for the contemporary visual arts in the city and region and a strong desire for new collaborative working and new governance structures for the delivery of arts marketing and cultural tourism.

The Northern Art Prize offers much for the marketing of contemporary visual arts, cultural tourism, city branding and urban renewal. Investing in and marketing of the arts is argued to serve as a stimulus that can bring a range of benefits for the business and wider community. Marketing, especially arts marketing, can help deliver social, economic and urban regeneration.

Deriving pleasure and meaning from one’s job is especially potent in the cultural industries, where workers routinely sacrifice monetary rewards, stability, and tidier careers for the nonmonetary benefits of self-expression, autonomy, and contribution to the greater good. Cultural labor markets are consequently characterized by the continual churning of its workforce; the lure of “cool” employment attracts an oversupply of aspirants while precariousness and routinized work lead to short careers. This article draws on qualitative data to further conceptualize the appeal and limits of nonmonetary rewards over time. Why do workers stay in precarious “cool” jobs? More specifically, how do workers stay committed to their jobs and perform the requisite deep acting for their roles? Through qualitative research on two sets of workers – music industry personnel and craft cocktail bartenders – this article examines patterns in these workers’ “experiential careers.” We identify three strategies cultural workers use to re-enchant their work lives: (1) deep engagement, (2) boundary work, and (3) changing jobs. In doing so, we show how the experiential careers of cultural workers resemble more of a cycle of enchantment than a linear path to exiting the field.

The purpose of this paper is to define and characterise the precise nature of these cultural systems and their resulting impact on the respective art and artists of each territory, by ascertaining the impact on those systems of their respective government and governance.

This paper is based on three approaches to art market modelling. All three are based on political ideologies. The first, which typifies the art markets of Western Europe and the USA, is predicated on a Pluralist and Neo-Liberal ideology. The others correspond to the systems of government in China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

It has been shown in this paper that political systems and their accompanying ideology, born of cultural preferences, have impacted on the art markets of China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. It has been demonstrated that all four markets are employing variants of the international norm.

The art that is exported from East Asia will only be accepted by East Asian national markets when East Asian art markets exercise a majority influence on emerging and transitional markets. It is not the intention of this paper to pursue this thought beyond the possibility that it may occur.

The ineluctable conclusion is, therefore, that the global art market is moving towards a bipolar affair.

This paper also suggests the disengagement of East Asian and Chinese “culture” and art from a global (western) norm and production and consumption of national culture in East Asia by East Asians.

The paper looks (for the first time) at the direct (and subliminal) influence of political systems on art markets and the consequential effects of political ideology on the art markets of East Asia and China. The paper arrives at a series of precise definitions for the way that these art markets operate.